


277. paper cuts

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [55]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 18:07:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7855657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I always wanted it to be you.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	277. paper cuts

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: self-harm scars]

When Sarah walks into her room Helena is sprawled facedown on the bed, dozing. And the word here is _sprawl_ – she fills the space, easily, hair falling off the side of the bed, arms splayed akimbo. One hand is clenched into the pillow. Her foot dangles off the corner of the bed. It’s wearing a sock with a hole in it; one of her toes sticks out.

She’s also wearing a tanktop, so Sarah can see her scars.

They rise and fall when she breathes. Sarah stops in the doorway, horribly mesmerized by them – she hadn’t seen them since their first real meeting, Helena shivering and sweating on the floor, bloodstain, stab wound. She’d – forgotten. She’d forgotten that they were there, underneath.

But there they are. Some of them are reddish; Sarah wonders about infection, but that’s not something you can exactly bring up. _Hey, so, I saw those cuts on your skin you try so hard to hide from me and—_

And Helena stirs. Sarah somehow feels that it’s the sound of her own breathing that did it; it feels inevitable that it would, that Helena would hear her heartbeat. One of Helena’s eyes cracks open and she considers Sarah from a weird, drooped angle. She doesn’t roll over. Sarah watches the cuts on her back ripple as she tilts her neck.

Helena studies her for a second with one sleep-shuttered gold-brown eye before her neck falls. Her muscles loosen. She falls back asleep, or looks close enough to it. Her breathing pulls in and out and in again.

Sarah carefully steps over to the bed and sits down. Before she can stop herself, her hand is on Helena’s shoulder. The raised edge of a scar presses up against her thumb, needy skin.

Helena goes absolutely still, like an electric shock; Sarah can’t see through the cloud of her hair, but she’s absolutely certain that Helena’s eyes are open. In the weird hypnosis of the moment, this sudden understanding that Sarah has tripped and found herself in, she doesn’t move her hand. Her thumb traces up the path of one of the scars. Moves back down again. It’s too slow and stilted to be a caress, a soft gesture. It’s too slow to mean anything.

She waits for Helena to tell her to stop. Instead Helena’s muscles loosen, one by deliberate one. She droops again. Her breathing is bucking like a wild thing, but she’s lying so very still. Sarah didn’t mean to enter this moment, but: she’s in it now, and for some reason Helena is letting her stay here. She doesn’t know why. She doesn’t know what this means, but she knows that it does mean – there’s a meaning to it, to Helena letting her touch her scars. So Sarah – doesn’t lift her hand. She just keeps not lifting her hand. She shifts it, fingers brushing over Helena’s skin, so that her hand is settled firm over Helena’s left shoulderblade. Helena’s skin under her fingers is a cartography of old hurts.

She hears the hushed intake of breath as Helena opens her mouth, pulls in air to say something. Her hand stills. She feels like a kid again, sneaking out at age thirteen, waiting for the lights to turn on and someone to tell her _no_. Helena’s heart thumping thumping, ricocheting through her bones and the skin of her back. That place where Sarah did not kill her.

But the breath sighs out, wordless. A breath sucked in – let out. Over and over, like Helena’s building to something. Like she’s trying.

Sarah could break the silence, but it would feel too much like shattering. So she doesn’t.

_Ya zavzhdy khotiv shchob tse bulo vam_ , Helena whispers. A confession that isn’t Sarah’s to keep, and it’s in the air, and it’s gone. Sarah pulls her hand off of Helena’s back, listens to the small sigh Helena makes as it goes and doesn’t say anything. She kicks off her shoes. She lies down next to Helena in what space there is on the bed, and throws her arm over Helena’s back. Helena sighs again, long and shuddery, and doesn’t move. All sorts of confessions are beating around Sarah’s mouth, teeth and tongue – _I want you to tell me what this meant to you, I want you to be something I can understand. I love you. I think I really do, and I don’t know what that means. Tell me what that means._

She doesn’t say anything, though. She just lies there next to Helena, and waits to fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed.


End file.
